Dude, I Want Moore
Matt and I went to see Michael Moore speak at UMass-Dartmouth last night, and it was great. Michael is such an entertaining presence on stage besides the fact that he makes a lot of sense, definitely go see him if his book tour stops in your area.
In short, the speech was about how most of the votes in this country are liberal, even if they won't define themselves as being such. You poll them on the issues and they give you a very liberal response. Also, most of the voters in this country are women or non-white minority, so why is it that the angry white voter is always the one politicians will bend over backwards to please?
He talked more about the US and Canada. While doing Bowling for Columbine, he said that he wondered how Canada could have 10 million homes and 7 million guns, but somehow not blow the fuck out of each other. One reason why he mentioned last night was the Canadian attitude v. American attitude. Canadians think of themselves as a group of people, and if one Canadian is hurt, then all Canadians are hurt. That's why there's nationalized health care and a social safety net.
But in America, it's me me me all the time. Pull yourself up by the boot straps, make yourself as much money as possible, and don' think about your fellow American. Me me me!
It's true, is it not? People in this country are very selfish, and look at the system we have built for ourselves based on those values. If one American is hurt, who cares? If 40 million Americans are hurt, who cares?! We're told that it's probably their own damn faults by the very same people who just shipped 3 million jobs out of the country.
Michael also talked about "forced ignorance" in America and how ignorance is celebrated, just look at who we have for president. He discussed an article from National Geographic where Americas, aged 18-25, were asked questions ranging from, "Where is Iraq?," to "Where is America?," or how large is our population. Results? 80% couldnt point to Iraq on a map, and 11% couldn't point to America on a map. Some thought that America had a population of 1-2 billion, too.
After citing this article, Michael asked if there were any foreigners in the crowd because he wanted to get one on stage. He picked out a Canadian, but the first one he called up[on couldn't come up because she got straight A's. He wanted an "average" Canadian. ;> Then he called on the "smartest student" from UMass to come on stage, and we'd have an America v. Canada quiz, average Canadian against a smart America. And, uhm, the Canadian won. The American did not know who the prime minister of Canada was, and she could not name a single country which bordered Iraq. (There are 6, the Canadian could only name 2. I could name 6, but I'm just a fucking freak. ;>)
That's not all he talked about. Getting Bush out of office was the huge topic, of course, since that's the reason why he put out his book. Michael will not be supporting a third party candidate this election, he's more corcerned about building an actual second party that's not full of spineless wimps who try running to the middle to get a few votes. He questions the Democratic strategy of going to the right to pander for votes when most Americans, if you are to base things off their answers to polls, are liberal. For the 2004 election, he suggests pressing the candidates now, get invloved in the campaigns an tell them what you want, what would make you vote for them. He also suggest taking over your country Democrat party, goto one of their meetings and bring 20 of your friends because there's probably only 15 people there anyways. Get out and create the opposition.
Matt got the speech recorde to mini-disc, and it sounds pretty good. So, there might be an MP3 available soon, which should make you happy because my memory is fuzzy and I missed a lot of things that I oculd have wrote about. I should start taking notes at speeches.
